The Natural Basis of Political Obligation

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
George Klosko
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Natural Basis ◽  
Political Ties ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Though questions of political obligation have long been central to liberal political theory, discussion has generally focused on voluntaristic aspects of the individual's relationship to the state, as opposed to other factors through which the state is able to ground compliance with its laws. The individual has been conceptualized as naturally without political ties, whether or not formally in a state of nature, and questions of political obligation have centered on accounting for political bonds.

scholarly journals Wojna i władza w filozofii politycznej Hobbesa

Etyka ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 137-157
Author(s):  
Sebastian Michalik
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

The subject of this article are two fundamental concepts of Hobbes’ political philosophy: “war of all against all” and political power. The analysis of anthropological basis of Hobbes’ political theory is of crucial importance for these considerations. It shows that the state of nature and the political state create dialectical relationship, not an insurmountable opposition. The further exploration leads to the conclusion that the sovereign power is identical with the rights and brutal actions of the individual living in the state of nature. In other words, political state is merely a continuation of conflicts taking place in the “war of all against all”. In order to conceal this fact Hobbes provides the sovereign power with the ideological effect of objectivity. The power based in sheer violence is masked as Leviathan who exists in the minds of its subject, creating an illusion of a cohesive social order devoid of any antagonisms and, therefore, objective.

The Muslim Tradition of Political Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrough Akhavi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Epistemological Foundation ◽  
The Individual

The doctrine of salvation in Islam centers on the community of believers. Contemporary Muslim political philosophy (or, preferably, political theory) covers a broad expanse that brings under its rubric at least two diverse tendencies: an approach that stresses the integration of religion and politics, and an approach that insists on their separation. Advocates of the first approach seem united in their desire for the “Islamization of knowledge,” meaning that the epistemological foundation of understanding and explanation in all areas of life, including all areas of political life, must be “Islamic.” Thus, one needs to speak of an “Islamic anthropology,” an “Islamic sociology,” an “Islamic political science,” and so on. But there is also a distinction that one may make among advocates of this first approach. Moreover, one can say about many, perhaps most, advocates of the first approach that they feel an urgency to apply Islamic law throughout all arenas of society. This article focuses on the Muslim tradition of political philosophy and considers the following themes: the individual and society, the state, and democracy.

Coleridge’s Exile from the Social Contract, 1795–1829

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
General Will ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Better Than

Coleridge wrote frequently about Rousseau throughout his varied career. His early lectures and letters draw on Rousseau’s critique of luxury and frequently allude to the general will, depicting Rousseau as a Christ-like figure. Coleridge’s subsequent disappointment with Pantisocracy led him to reject Rousseau and the social contract. Comparing Rousseau to Luther in The Friend, Coleridge argues that Rousseau’s unhappiness arises from a conflict between an age of individualism and an ongoing need for community. According to Coleridge, poetry tolerates this conflict better than philosophy. In ‘Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ Coleridge suggests that social retreat offers illusory solace from war and social crisis. He critiques the state of nature, sympathy, and even religion for failing to balance the self with its environment. Thematically and formally The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores this crisis in cohering systems. Through the mariner’s relationship to the albatross, the wedding that frames the poem, and episodes of the supernatural that disrupt the ballad form, Coleridge defines a breaking point between the individual and general wills.

Filmer, Sir Robert (1588–1653)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Filmer was one of the most important political thinkers in seventeenth-century England, and the author of Patriarcha. Locke replied to this and other works by Filmer in the Two Treatises of Government – perhaps the most famous of all works of liberal political theory. Filmer argued that notions of mixed or limited government were false and pernicious, and that the powers of all legitimate rulers were derived not from the people but directly from God, to whom alone rulers were accountable. Filmer’s contemporaries commonly held that the authority of a father and husband over his family stemmed not from the consent of his wife and children but from the natural and divinely appointed order of things. Filmer harnessed such ideas to the cause of royal absolutism by arguing that the state and the family were essentially the same institution.

Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law

Hypatia ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Minow ◽  
Mary Lyndon Shanley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Family ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This article discusses three main orientations in recent works of legal and political theory about the family—contract-based, community-based, and rights-based—and argues that none of these takes adequate account of two paradoxical features of family life and of the family's relationship to the state. A coherent political and legal theory of the family in the contemporary United States requires recognition of the relational rights and responsibilities intrinsic to family life.

Constituting Politics: Power, Reciprocity, and Identity

Hypatia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 96-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

This essay considers whether liberal political theory has tools with which to count gender, and so gender relations, as political. Can liberal political theory count sub-ordination among the harms of sex inequality that the state ought to correct? Watson defends a version of deliberative democracy—liberalism—as able to place issues of social inequality in the form of hierarchical social identities at the center of its normative commitments, and so at the center of securing justice.

Writing the Social Contradiction: Rousseau’s Literary Politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Conformity ◽  
General Will ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Literary Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter explores Rousseau’s account of the tension between community and individual by examining the Second Discourse and the Social Contract on the one hand, and Julie on the other. In his political theory Rousseau defines the state of nature as a mere fantasy which belongs to an optative imagined past. In leaving the state of nature, people trade basic needs for decadent desires. Rousseau introduces the general will as a practical device for managing the asociability of the private will, which is driven mainly by appetite. To safeguard the general will from its wayward members, individuals must form a social contract which transforms them into sociable beings. In Julie Rousseau explores the sacrifices that individuals make in joining the general will, as Julie is torn between personal desire on the one hand and social conformity on the other. Rousseau’s literature suggests that the two are incompatible and thus ‘judges’ his philosophy, exploring the deathly outcome of contract. Rousseau’s use of literature to critique the social contract constitutes his major legacy to British Romantic writers.

Modern Political Philosophy and Prehistoric Anthropology: Some Preliminary Issues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The State ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Theory Section ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Relationship

Because this book involves two very different academic disciplines, political philosophy and anthropology, some background about the relevant topics in each one is helpful. In this chapter, Section 1 introduces the relevant political theory. Section 2 discusses some of the anthropological methods and conceptual issues involved in the examination of the evidence relevant to these philosophical arguments. Section 3 discusses how the state and the state of nature are defined in relation to each other. Section 4 addresses some responses this book is likely to receive. Section 5 discusses the relationship between this book and modern indigenous peoples.

On Macpherson's Developmental Liberalism

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian H. Angus
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

The work of C. B. Macpherson is extremely significant for those seeking to understand the cul-de-sac which liberal political theory and institutions have entered. Considering the experience of socialist societies in this century, the necessity for a nonmarket political theory to retain a positive connection to Western liberal values should be beyond dispute. Any postmarket society requires, not pious reassurances, but institutional support for individual rights that are the most vehemently defended in the liberal tradition. But of course this is not enough. Contemporary society is already undermining liberal individualism through massive organizations and manipulated consumption. The inability of liberal theory to analyze effectively and propose alternatives to the contemporary decline of the individual suggests that the cul-de-sac is rooted in the conceptual foundations of liberalism itself. Macpherson's rigorous analysis of the market assumptions of liberal theory pinpoints this conceptual inadequacy and attempts to maintain a commitment to liberal values in a postmarket society.

Thomas Hobbes's Materialism, Language, and the Possibility of Politics

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dungey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Social

AbstractThomas Hobbes sought a reconstruction of philosophy, ethics, and politics that would end, once and for all, the bitter disputes that led to the English Civil War. This reconstruction begins with the first principles of matter and motion and extends to a unique account of consent and political obligation. Hobbes intended to produce a unified philosophical system linking his materialist account of human nature to his moral and political theory. However, his materialism gives rise to a set of perceptions, imagination, and desires that contribute to the chaos of the state of nature. The sort of person that emerges from Hobbes's materialist anthropology is unlikely to be able to make the necessary agreements about common meaning and language that constitute the ground of the social contract. Therefore, Hobbes's materialism frustrates the very purpose for which it is conceived.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document